Objected to the Question

1895

Among the questions sent out by a school commissioner was the following example in arithmetic:

"If one horse can run a mile in 1 minute and 50 seconds and another a mile in 2 minutes, how far would the first horse be ahead in a match race of two miles?"

A teacher returned the question with this attached: "I will have nothing to do with the race problem." — Atlanta Journal.


Moody Jowett

One evening while John Addington Symonds was at Oxford he dined with Professor Jowett. After dinner the latter sat staring at the fire and would not speak, but yet did not seem to want Symonds to go. At last he spoke oracularly: "When I don't say anything, people fancy I am thinking about something. Generally I am thinking about nothing at all. Good night!" At another time he said: "Mr. Swinburne is a most curious young man. He used to bring me long and eloquent essays. He had a very remarkable power of language, but it was all language. I could never find that he was following any line of thought." — San Francisco Argonaut.


Trivia

Pythagoras directed his disciples not to wear the skins of animals in any form, and so their shoes were made of the bark of trees.

The first gas lamps in Dublin were put in position in 1818, and before 1825 the entire Irish capital was thus lighted.